Many motorized vehicles are designed to accommodate the towing or trailering of various loads, including without limitation: cargo hoppers, campers, boats, and sometimes other motorized vehicles. A wide range of systems and devices to enhance vehicle stability while towing is known. These devices may include simple add-ons such as airfoils and other vehicle trim pieces such as ground effects, which confer the vehicle with additional aerodynamic stability over its design control. Additionally, systems for traction control have been developed, as well as automatically-adjusting suspension systems which alter the height of the body of a vehicle in proportion to the weight of a load.
It often occurs that trailer design changes are made by engineers during the course of trailer design, without regard to the overall effect of their design changes may have on the stability of every possible vehicle/trailer combination of which their trailer is to be a part. Thus, it is natural that some vehicle/trailer combinations may be inherently more stable at highway speeds than others, and there is in general no way to reasonably predict the behavior of all such possible combinations, when faced with various challenging road situations, such as crosswinds, etc., prior to an actual road test.
It is known to mount sensors on the rear and side of vehicles to detect objects behind a vehicle for active safety features, such as vision sensors used for rear view and side blind zone object detection, and also radar sensors for side blind zone detection, rear object detection, and rear cross traffic detection. Ultrasonic sensors are often present on vehicles for assistance in rear parking maneuvers.
One of the major enablers for the development of a vehicle and trailer stability control system is the availability of a hitch angle sensor which can be independent of the trailer connected. A remote hitch angle sensing system is a key enabler for a low cost vehicle-trailer stability control. There are several known contact type hitch angle sensors which have been used for such application. However, these contact type sensors are cumbersome since trailers are frequently connected and disconnected, and a new calibration and adjustment is necessary following each such connection cycle.
In a general sense, it is desirable to provide systems having increased degree of reliability and integrity for aiding vehicle/trailer combinations than what has been previously available. One shortfall for trailer control systems has been the sensing of the trailer hitch articulation angle for a trailer control system. There remains a need in the art for utilization of the output of the aforementioned sensors in an improved synergistic fashion to provide greater stability while traveling and to provide means for directional control in vehicle/trailer backing and parking. The present systems and methods provide enhanced means for assisting in stabilizing vehicle/trailer combinations by providing a new and beneficial means for calculating the hitch articulation angle, using sensing means which are disposed solely on the motorized vehicle used for towing.